Asus Republic of Gamers G752VS OC Edition Review

Table of Contents

Introduction, Design & Features

The Asus Republic of Gamers (RoG) line of notebooks flaunts a few shapes and sizes, but the top-end, just-refreshed RoG G752 series we're reviewing here comes in just one: huge.

This 17.3-inch behemoth is physically almost identical to the RoG G752VT-DH72 that we reviewed earlier this year, in the spring, but that's only on the outside. A few not-so-subtle differences under the skin put this new G752VS, dubbed the OC Edition (specifically, the $2,499-MSRP model G752VS-XB72K we tested), in an entirely different league of performance. Most of that difference is down to its brand-new Nvidia "Pascal" graphics chip, here in the form of the GeForce GTX 1070. (See our review of the GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition desktop card for a full rundown on what Pascal itself, the graphics architecture, brings to the table.)

The GeForce GTX 1070 in its mobile form has no "M" suffix, unlike with previous-generation Nvidia mobile chips, and for good reason. Nvidia says the mobile GTX 1070 should deliver performance within 5 percent of that of the full-on desktop GeForce GTX 1070, a video card powerful enough to max out any current AAA game, producing playable performance even at 4K resolution, in many cases. According to our benchmarks, however, the chip in the RoG G752VS OC Edition goes beyond that. It produced almost identical performance to its desktop counterpart, thanks to some factory overclocking of its internal graphics hardware (+50MHz core, +75MHz memory).

Well, now! True desktop-grade, current-gen graphics in a not-$5,000 laptop ought to give us pause right there. But if that weren't enough, the G752VS-XB72K's top-shelf Intel Core i7-6820HK quad-core processor is also overclocked (here up to a 3.8GHz possible boost clock, from 3.6GHz), as is the unit's 32GB of DDR4 memory, from a typical 2,133MHz to 2,400MHz. All of this informed the "OC Edition" name of this laptop; more important, it also contributed to some of the highest scores we've seen in our gaming benchmarks, to date, from a notebook. And never mind just laptops: It gave most gaming desktops we’ve tested a run for their money, too.

Still, while the performance potential of this Asus machine is certainly exciting, in these early days of mobile Pascal, it’s a bit like judging a car solely on its Nürburgring lap times. You have to take the notebook itself into consideration, from its build quality and screen to its keyboard feel. Not to spoiler-ize our review, but we found the RoG G752VS OC Edition possessed an abundance of high quality in almost every area. It fell a bit short only in battery life, but that's borderline forgivable on a notebook this size.

So without further ado, let's get this engine started.

Design

The Asus G752 series is nothing if not radical, futuristic, and a bit crazy-looking.

Its cyborg-like exterior is a combination of gunmetal-color brushed aluminum on the lid and rear, to silicone soft-touch on the palm rest, and jagged-cut silver plastic. The power button looks like a shard of glass, and there’s a copper strip running under it.

The Asus "Republic of Gamers" brand text is visible on the back of the display hinge, and above the macro keys on the keyboard. An RoG logo adorns the right palm rest, and a backlit version resides in the center of attention on the back of the lid. There, it’s flanked by two light strips, and a light bar running between the cooling vents.

Even the red keyboard lettering looks like it came out of a video game. Needless to say, there won't be any mistaking this beast for a corporate-issue fleet notebook—not in a thousand years.

Our pictures do little to hide the fact the RoG G752VS OC Edition is massive, even for a 17.3-inch notebook. The chassis is 1.5 inches tall at its thickest point, and it tips the scales at almost 8.9 pounds. The extended rear part of the chassis increases its depth to 12.7 inches, about an inch deeper than a typical notebook at this screen size. The 16.4-inch width isn't much more than expected from a 17-incher, though. That said, if you're considering buying this laptop, don't say we didn't warn you that it was huge.

The copper-colored display hinge is plastic. It extends out of the rear protrusion, propping the entire display unit well above the chassis surface. We like how this brings the display up closer to eye level, almost to the level of an all-in-one desktop's display. The hinge is stiff, yet it's no problem to open the lid with one hand, thanks to the heft of the chassis. Display wobble is kept to a minimum.

The keyboard is full-size, with island-style keys and a separate numeric keypad. It's quite desktop-like in nature. Even the arrow keys are divorced out (and full-size!), though as a consequence the numeric keypad's "0" key is still, unfortunately, the size of a regular key, not the double-size kind usually seen on a numeric pad. We'll take this trade-off, though, for the isolation of the arrow keys.

The only other minor layout nuance is NumLock's replacement by a dedicated "Asus RoG" key, which launches the RoG Gaming Center software. This software provides you with basic system stats, such as CPU and GPU operating temperatures and frequencies, and it also serves to launch a series of other Asus utilities. You can set up to three gaming profiles, and disable the rear light bar and logo lighting. This is also where the CPU and GPU overclocking gets done.

Here is a look at the OC control, which lies under the Turbo Gear Config heading on the main page. The Extreme setting is the factory overclocking, which is how the system comes configured to run out of the box, and how we tested it.

The keyboard keys have a healthy 2.5mm of up/down travel, though the feedback feels mostly laptop-average. (It's a bit soft and rubbery, which isn't unpleasant, but there's no tactile click or clack feedback.) The build is sturdy, though: Keyboard flex is practically nil in the keyboard's middle, with just a little bit of softness at the left and right margins. There are three levels of red backlighting, plus off, adjustable by pressing the Fn+F3/F4 keys. And the WASD key cluster is outlined subtly to set it apart...

The backlighting is very useful in the dark, but we'd like to see user-selectable colors at this price point. The SteelSeries-branded keyboard on the competing MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro offers three lighting zones, each of which can be set to any color you wish. At the farthest reaches of the color-sophistication spectrum is the Razer Blade (2016), which allows RGB backlighting on a per-key basis. We'd furthermore like to see some variable lighting effects on this Asus machine, such as breathing or wave-forms. The lack of it is definitely a minor problem, but those are generally the kind you face when spending north of two grand for a gaming notebook.

Above the left side of the keyboard is a row of five dedicated macro buttons, labeled M1 to M5...

We appreciate these macro keys being included, but we would like to see support for more profiles. You can save just three profiles using the RoG MacroKey software, for a total of 15 possible combinations. The camera-icon key to the left of the macro buttons launches the Xsplit Gamecaster software.

The luxuriously oversize touch pad is trapezoid-shaped, as are its two dedicated mouse buttons. The anti-glare surface on it is excellent, and so is the plentiful tactile feedback from the buttons. Though their feel is great, the buttons make practically no noise when clicked. Also, the touch pad is easily disabled (or re-enabled) by pressing Fn+F9.

Features & Connectivity

The RoG G752VS OC Edition’s 17.3-inch display is a 1,920x1,080-pixel (1080p) screen with a practical anti-glare coating to keep reflections to a minimum. The panel itself makes use of in-plane-switching (IPS) for wide viewing angles. The picture looks the same whether the display is tilted forward or backward, or viewed side to side. The image quality is outstanding, with plenty of color and brightness. It was bright enough, as a matter of fact, that we felt obliged to use it at about half brightness in dimmer environments.

The display supports Nvidia G-Sync up to a 75Hz refresh rate. It's put to steady use on the RoG G752VS OC Edition, thanks in large part to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 graphics and its pleasant habit of producing far more frames per second than is technically needed for playability.

Two stereo speakers sit at the rear corners of the chassis, raised and aimed at the back of the display lid when the latter is opened. It's a 2.1 setup, the ".1" courtesy of a small subwoofer module on the underside of the chassis...

We thought the overall audio quality was more than satisfactory, but there simply wasn't enough volume even when cranked up—surprising, given the size of this machine's body. We were left wishing for more audible impact while gaming with the speakers cranked to 100 percent.

For connectivity, it’s safe to say the RoG G752VS OC Edition has enough to go around. It even has an optical drive, something of a rarity in today’s notebook world. The ports are located along the sides only, with nothing on the front or back. The left edge holds the cable locking slot, two USB Type-A 3.0 ports, the tray-load DVD burner, and an SD-card slot, which allows cards to insert fully into the body of the machine.

The right edge holds the headphone/SPDIF, microphone, and line-in jacks; a USB Type-C 3.1 port (without Thunderbolt 3 support); an always-on USB Type-A 3.0 port and another (ordinary) USB 3.0; mini-DisplayPort and HDMI video-out ports; and the obligatory Ethernet and AC power jacks.

For wireless, the G752VS OC Edition has Intel’s top-end Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260, a card with a 2x2 antenna setup and 802.11ac support. It also has built-in Bluetooth 4.1. There's little more that we could want in that vein.

Components

Although the RoG G752VS OC Edition is state of the art, the only truly new part inside is its Nvidia "Pascal" GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card. Don't get us wrong, though: The rest of this component loadout is impressive, through and through.

Its Intel Core i7-6820HK quad-core processor is a step up from the Core i7-6700HQ that's standard fare in most gaming notebooks. It runs at 2.7GHz base, with a 3.2GHz Turbo Boost mode on four cores, and goes up to 3.6GHz on a single core. But, as we mentioned, it's not running at stock clocks in this big notebook. Asus took advantage of this K-series processor's unlocked multipliers, factory-overclocking it to 3.8GHz on a single core, and— impressively—up to 3.6GHz across all four cores in Turbo Boost mode. The Core i7-6700HQ, by comparison, can reach only 3.5GHz on a single core and 3.1GHz across four cores.

The $2,499 RoG G752VS-XB72K SKU we tested includes 32GB of DDR4 RAM (in a configuration of two 16GB DIMMs), overclocked to 2,400MHz instead of the usual 2,133MHz. It's joined by a 256GB Toshiba NVMe-supporting solid state drive (an M.2 Type 2280/80mm-long drive) and a 1TB 7,200rpm hard drive for storage. At this writing (when mobile Pascal was making its debut), Asus offered one SKU of this machine higher than our tested one: The RoG G752VS-XB78K, which has 64GB of RAM (using four 16GB DIMMs) and a 512GB SSD. It retails for $500 more than our unit, at $2,999.

Two of the RAM slots, the 2.5-inch bay, and the M.2 slot are accessible through the bottom panel. It’s secured by a single Philips-head screw. Both of the bottom RAM slots were empty in our G752VS-XB72K test unit, meaning the other two (situated under the keyboard) were populated. We didn’t try to access those, as it looks like quite the operation to take apart the rest of the chassis. Needless to say, there was no reason to, as those concealed slots were already populated by modules of the maximum supported capacity (16GB). The processor and graphics card were also not accessible through the bottom panel, presumably requiring full disassembly to reach.

Let's talk a bit more about the GTX 1070. This "Pascal" graphics processor includes 8GB of GDDR5 memory and a 256-bit memory bus. The top-end GTX 1080, announced but just coming on the market in mobile form, makes use of faster GDDR5X. The mobile GTX 1070's other specs are almost the same as the desktop GTX 1070 Founders Edition. Here's a comparison chart illustrating the differences as the GTX 1070 has been in implemented in the first two Pascal-based laptops we have seen...

GeForce GTX 1070 (in Asus RoG G752VS-XB72K)

GeForce GTX 1070 (in MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro)

GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition (Desktop Card)

GPU Clock

1,493MHz

1,443MHz

1,506MHz

GPU Boost Clock

1,695MHz

1,645MHz

1,683MHz

Memory Clock

2,077MHz

2,002MHz

2,002MHz

Memory Configuration

8GB GDDR5

Memory Bus

256-bit

Memory Bandwidth

265.9GB per second

256.3GB per second

256.3GB per second

Pixel Fill Rate

95.6GPixels per second

92.4GPixels per second

96.4GPixels per second

Texture Fill Rate

253.8GTexels per second

245.3GTexel per second

241.0GTexel per second

ROPs/TMUs

64/170

64/170

64/160

Shaders

2,048 Unified

2,048 Unified

1,920 Unified

In most respects, the mobile GeForce GTX 1070 is close to identical to the desktop GTX 1070 Founders Edition, and actually being surpassed by the Asus machine's implementation of it in several areas. The G752VS's GTX 1070 is overclocked by +50MHz on the GPU core, and +75MHz on the memory clock compared to the standard card in the MSI GT62VR.

Asus noted that the GPU could be manually overclocked via the RoG Gaming Center software up to +100MHz on the core, and +300MHz on the memory. (We didn’t spend much time toying with this, in the run-up to testing this unit before launch.) That said, the factory overclocking, coupled with the overclocked Core i7-6820HK processor, is plenty for most conceivable scenarios. It gave the G752VS OC Edition a noticeable performance advantage over the Core i7-6700HQ, as we’ll see in the benchmarks.

Cooling

Another big difference between the entry-level G752VT-DH72 we reviewed earlier this year and this upper-tier G752VS-XB72K is the cooling system.

Asus has incorporated a 3D vapor chamber to improve the cooling efficiency. This technology enlarges the amount of surface area available for cooling by incorporating the heat pipes into the vapor chamber. This cooling system isn't new in this particular G752 model; rather, it debuted on the previous top-end model, the G752VY series. But that model came out less than a year ago, so the technology is still reasonably new.

Also in this cooling system is a special chamber on the outside of the fans where dust and other debris collect, and exit via a dedicated lane in the cooling fins. As we noted, it would probably be an adventure to disassemble this notebook fully to reach the cooling fans, so this proactive cleaning arrangement is much appreciated. (Our suggestion for testing this—by playing games all day for several weeks to try and get dust to build up—didn’t quite fly with our upper management.)

Inside the chassis are two large fans. They're visible through a narrow smoky-clear plastic panel on the notebook's underside, along with the numerous copper heat pipes. Undoubtedly, the semi-transparent plastic is there to show off the cooling, akin to see-through panels over the engines on high-end sports cars.

The G752VS makes practically no noise at idle, with just a small amount of warm air seeping out either of the rear-facing vents. We had to put our ears up to the chassis to determine whether the fans were on at all. The fans kick into high gear while gaming, but they have no whine characteristic, or excessive motor noise. They're easy to ignore even in a quiet room. The top and bottom of the chassis remain around room temperature, more or less, with a slight warm spot on the underside around the clear plastic panel.

We observed CPU temperatures topping out in the mid-60-degree C range while gaming, and the GPU never climbed out of the low-to-mid 70s. These are impressively low temperatures, especially for the GPU. Even the desktop GTX 1070 graphics card runs close to 90 degrees C while heavily stressed in gaming.